Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

            It was a Friday morning, 10:51. Cloudy skies and a light drizzle of rain blanketed the reapers’ realm, speckling the paneled glass windows of the high-rises. The pigeons were cooing in the aviary. The gentle hum of sanding wheels came from the glasses-making workshop on the floor below them. It blended with the sounds of rustling paper, clicking typewriters, and general office chatter. It was a serene and quiet day.

            “Good morning, sir,” Alan said cheerily, closing the door behind him. “I have this quarter’s numbers… uh…” His pleasant mood, caused by Eric’s morning gift of an oat milk latte, quavered at the sight that greeted him. “Everything alright?”

His boss, the indomitable and infamously cruel William, looked… distraught. His jacket was off. His shirt was rolled up, exposing his toned forearms. His eyes looked frantic instead of their usual manic. Most damningly- his hair was askew, over his forehead like bangs. A rare, disturbing sight; it was a harbinger of discord. “Yes, yes. Sit down.”

Alan sat down as Will took a bottle of cream liquor from his desk drawer and poured it into his mostly empty coffee mug. With utter nihilism, he drank it sharply with a wince. “The quarterlies, Humphries. Get on with it.”

“It’s 10 in the morning, sir,” Alan said, rather blankly. “Should- should you”-

“I need it,” Will replied with absolutely no emotion in his voice other than ‘doom’. “For my nerves. Not that it is any of your business, but this is the worst day of my life. Yes, including the day I died, so don’t even ask!”

            Alan had seen his boss like this on a few occasions before. Holiday parties. Whenever he relapsed and started doing coke again. Staff parties. Birthday parties. Half days. You know, anytime there was an overall air of joy in the air. It was like he was allergic to the happiness of his employees.

            “Ugh.” Will cleared his throat, settling into a more professional pose. “My apologies. How- how are the quarterly numbers for the dispatch?”

            Paper rustled. “Mostly good,” Alan reported as he flipped through his prepared notes- which were written on a cat-shaped sticky note. “Knox’s numbers are back to his statistical average after the outlier of the Campania incident. Uh, some more good news- instances of reapers being bitten by the undead is down about 20%. So- so that’s two good things right there.”

            “How are Sutcliffe’s numbers?” Spears asked. He held his morning coffee like it was a glass of bourbon. Its alcohol content probably wasn’t too far off from that.

            “Well, she’s only been back in the field for half the quarter, so it’s hard to say.”

Alan glanced up from his files. His boss was staring at the wall, discontented. He hadn’t even tried to slander Grelle once; something was definitely off about him. Will sighed, the lines under his eyes more pronounced than usual. “Is that all, Humphries?”

“Sir, are you okay?” Alan asked, closing the manila folder. “Because you seem… disturbed.”

Will glanced around them to make sure no one was watching. He sighed, brushing back his loose hair with thin fingers. “Humphries, if I tell you something, are you capable of keeping it a secret?”

Alan blinked. As work friends went, William was the kind that he saw outside of work a few times a week. He believed Will was a decent man at heart, despite the man’s frequent attempts to seemingly prove the contrary. So, he nodded, and leaned closer as his boss of 12 years told him:

“I am dealing with some deeply unfortunate… amorous feelings.”

“Stop,” Alan’s fruity self instinctively gasped. This was either the best or worst day of his life, in terms of gossip. He collected himself, clearing his throat. “Ahem. Uh. I think we should talk more about that, sir. Who- who are these feelings directed towards?” Please don’t be me. Please don’t be me. Please, no.

Will groaned, pinching his brow like he was trying to wake himself up from a nightmare. “I’d… rather not say.”

Just then, in a bout of unfortunate timing that was right up there with the time Alan had come out as gay to his coworkers (don’t ask), the office door swung open. Grelle, leaning on the steel handle like it could be load-bearing, gave their boss a flutter-lidded smile. In rapid-fire, she spun out an explanation for the cloud of smoke and vague smell of pot that came in Will’s office door with her. “My darling? I just wanted to let you know that if you smell pot, it’s not me. It’s Ronnie. Don’t worry, I confiscated it from him. I knew you wouldn’t care! Alright, I’ll leave you boys to it~!”

The redheaded reaper blew him a kiss and strode, a little loopily, across the bullpen back to her desk. As she walked, Will stared at the door blankly and sighed. Grelle’s intervention was apparently enough to make him switch from coffee liqueur to cigarettes. The lighter clicked at the same time that Alan’s two brain cells knocked together to create a Thought.

“Oh. So…” Alan vaguely gestured in Grelle’s direction. He couldn’t stifle his smile, which earned him a scoff from Will.

“Never,” Spears scowled, taking a deep breath. “I’d…” he sighed. “Alan.”

The man in question sat up straighter. Will had never addressed him- or possibly anyone- by their first name alone before. His normally perfectly-put-together boss was distressed, day drinking, and smoking in his office. “Yeah?”

“We’ve known each other a decade; I’ll be straight with you.” He paused and took a drag from his cigarette. “Regarding Sutcliffe… I have never needed to fuck someone more in my life.”

Maybe it was the smoke in the air or the unexpected confession from his stoic manager, but Alan collapsed into a coughing fit. Will, who had a shred of decency in his otherwise frozen heart, extinguished his cigarette. “Alright, don’t be dramatic. As if you’re such a puritan. Everyone sees the way you look at Slingby’s pectorals.”

Alan, who didn’t think anyone had noticed the way he looked at Eric’s golden, rugged, sculpted-by-Michelangelo-himself tits, had no comeback for this. Seriously, picture an ad for a golden liquid glow bronzer rubbed into a hot rugged werewolf’s chest. Then you’d have some idea of what Alan was witnessing every time Eric took off his shirt in the changing rooms.

In the present moment, because he should not be thinking about Eric’s chest, Alan coughed again. Will groaned loudly, holding his forehead in his hands. “I should’ve fired Sutcliffe when I had the chance. God, just look at that.”

At that moment, Grelle was bent over picking her pen up off the floor- incidentally showing off her ass. The sheer amount of longing in Will’s stare was staggering. It was the kind of look a closeted young pastor gave the performers in a cross-dressing peepshow.

Alan looked at Grelle, then back at Will. “Sir. You’re joking. I mean, every day you complain about her work performance. You’re telling me that you’re secretly in love with her? Let me be frank here, I just don’t buy it.”

“I don’t give a fuck whether you call yourself Frank or Alan,” Will scoffed, holding the unlit cig in his hand like he was French. “Not that it is remotely your business, but my relationship with Sutcliffe is something that would make Freud write a whole new book. However, ever since the Dalles incident, I have been keeping him at a distance.”

“Her,” Alan incisively corrected.

“My point being,” Will continued, unaffected by the interjection, “This dry spell has apparently caused my brain to… malfunction. It produces traitorous feelings, focusing on… a certain subordinate. And I can no longer deny the toll it is taking on me to deny these feelings.”

“Oh my god, you’re in love with Grelle.”

Will fumed. “I am not in love with Sutcliffe. I need to fuck Sutcliffe.”

Alan blanked. This was an interesting Friday. He couldn’t help but want to encourage his weirdly lust-struck boss. Grelle would be over the moon… until it turned out to be just a physical thing. Actually, if Will told her that, she might kill him. She didn’t exactly have a history of good break-ups. And she was really starting to be more mentally stable these days; a new factor like a situationship with her deeply uncaring boss couldn’t be helpful to that.

Alan leaned forward. “Okay. Listen. You need to not fuck Grelle.”

“Well, obviously,” Will hissed with the same vitriol he usually reserved for handing out vicious shift assignments to hungover subordinates. “And you need to keep me from doing it. If you leave me alone, I’ll take her in a closet before the day is over. And possibly under my desk. And on it.”

“… Jesus.”

Will scoffed. “Are you going to help me or not?”

Alan sighed. “Okay, I have an idea. Tell me everything you hate about her. We’ll make a list, and you’ll be back to normal again, okay?” Will sighed and reluctantly agreed as Alan produced a novelty glitter pen and notepad from his files. He sketched out the date and a header. “So, what do you hate about Grelle Sutcliffe?”

As the words came from his mouth, Alan realized that this was messy behavior at best. It’s really not that he was trying to make a burn book, or that he was trying to make Grelle’s crush of basically forever hate her. He was trying to keep things functioning in this dispatch, okay? A Will full of hate was a stable Will, capable and skilled at managing his employees. A Will full of lust? He would burn this office down out of spite.

            “Sutcliffe takes nothing seriously, talks about sex at every opportunity, is far too into Shakespeare, is gender-confused, drinks coffee with a ridiculous amount of cream and sugar, is a shopaholic, a liar, a terrible flirt, and cheats at cards. An attention whore, makes obscene noises, uses too much perfume, and she insists on smoking after sex, but she always has a coughing fit, every single time. Terrible taste in men, will give a lap-dance to seemingly anyone, likes demons far too much, chronically unprofessional, chronically tardy, and dresses far too revealing. And she is not nearly as good at giving head as she thinks she is.”

            He went on for some time, but Alan was president of the stenographer’s club in high school for a reason. Pen writing like fire, he wrote in shorthand nearly every note, except for the last one. That was just petty. He nodded. “Okay! So, whenever you start thinking about her like that, you look at the list and remind yourself of all the things you don’t like about her.”

            “The issue is, Humphries, that there are, unfortunately, things I like about Sutcliffe as well,” Will admitted, not making direct eye contact with him. “Though they are much less numerous.”

            Alan nodded, trying to work with him. “Alright, I’ll make a pros column”-

            “God damn me for saying this, but Sutcliffe can ride like the damn ocean crashing on a beach,” Will lamented. He relit the cigarette, and Alan didn’t fault him- he had never seen the man more unkempt. “Men used to go to war for an ass like that.”

            His pen hovering above the page, Alan faltered. “Well, sir… it just enriches my life, to know that you dream constantly about Grelle’s ass. Thank you for telling me that, at- wow, 11am. This is… this is a great day for me.”

            Will narrowed his tired eyes. “Alright then, why don’t you take a turn being vulnerable? Why don’t you tell me about what’s going on with you and Slingby? None of us in this office were born yesterday, Humphries.”

            “So, Grelle’s ass!” Alan said bluntly, trying to change the topic to literally anything else. “Tell me about that.”

            Will, initially repulsed, seemed to consider it. He took a few deep breaths from the cig, then sighed, almost regretfully. It was an emotion Alan had rarely, if ever seen on William T. Spears. He looked introspective. Thoughtful. Human. He was such a cold, professional man that Alan sometimes forgot he must have feelings. Alan tilted his head, feeling a warm ray of empathy for his isolated manager.

            “She’s so tight,” Will said longingly, without a shred of shame.

            Oh, hell no. “I will throw us both out that window, sir.”

            Will shook his head, as if to wake himself up. “Apologies.”

**********

            Grelle sipped her cinnamon latte and mused. Her dear Will was looking very distressed and attractive today. He’d been particularly distracted when she’d brought him his morning coffee. He did not ask her to bring him coffee, she just did it for fun. More often than not, it got poured into his office monstera plant and the empty mug was shoved back into her arms. Today, he actually kept it on his desk to drink. Plain black coffee, his favorite. She stared at him from her desk, trying not to crush the cardboard of her coffee cup in her hand. He looked oh so raggedly professional from inside the glass walls of his office.

She sighed, tapping her manicured fingers on her desk. “I have never wanted to give a man head so badly in my life, Ronnie.”

            Ron, who was used to her big personality, just yawned and checked his period-inappropriate watch. “Good morning to you too, miss.”

            “Find Eric and tell him to take his shirt off,” Grelle declared. She didn’t much go for Earth signs romantically, but damn, the man had a chest like a lusty sculpture of a Nordic god. “That’ll distract me for a good five minutes.”

            “Slingby’s out,” 209 said as he passed by, sitting at his desk. Othello, who was sitting on Alan’s vacant desk eating a bag of licorice, snickered. “Really? When did he come out? Happy pride month to him.”

            While the boys made bets with Othello on whether Eric was a homosexual or not, Grelle peered through the top of her glasses at Will. She had made up her mind and was set on making love to her stone-cold supervisor six ways till Chelsea. The only questions that remained were ‘where first?’ and ‘how long is Alan going to stay in Will’s office with him?’. She wasn’t a woman with infinite time on her hands.

            “Yo, Grelle- I’m not sure what to write in this part…” Ronald trailed off, limply holding a half-completed soul intake form. “Hey, why are you staring at Spears like that?”

            Grelle moaned, more morosely than erotically. “Because I have never needed to be fucked and suck- and to fuck and suck- more in my eternal existence. Is that what you wanted to hear, Ronnie?? Is that what I can help you with?!”

            Her slightly frightened and slightly stoned trainee shrunk back into his seat. “Chill out, Miss Sutcliffe,” he laughed nervously. “It’s 10am.”

            Othello rummaged through a drawer in Alan’s desk and withdrew a brownie bite in a plastic baggie. He tossed it to Ron, who handed it to a lamenting Grelle, who immediately devoured it with her sharp teeth.

            “Ugh, it’s maddening,” Grelle complained, the brownie’s chocolate smearing her red lipstick to a burgundy. “I feel like, if I don’t get it in me in the next five minutes, I’ll… I’ll scream. I’ll set this place on fire. I’ll cry. I mean, it’s been so long; I don’t know if I even have a hole there anymore! It might have closed up! Damn it, I just really need to be fucked!”

            Her coworkers stared at her blankly. Their expressions ranged from stoned and stunned (Ronnie) to ‘I’m going to quit’ (209) to snickering like a little imp (Othello).

            After a minute of silence, Grelle said, “I’m rather offended that none of you said something along the lines of, ‘Grelle, I’m willing to take one for the team and fuck you hard’. I would’ve refused, but you should’ve at least offered.”

            “What would be the point? Your heart’s set on Will, for some godforsaken reason,” Othello shrugged. “Personally? I think you guys are a mismatch. I’m rooting for you and the hot demon butler.”

            “A novel idea would be to keep it in your pants and not have sex with our supervisor,” 209 said as he resumed his filing work. They had him starting out strong with that stack of paperwork. He’d even had to travel to some weird orphanage in the countryside, she’d heard.

            Ron nodded, his short yellow hair swishing like an animated pony’s. “You’re only gonna make him mad at you if you try and sleep with him. No offense, but he just does not seem that into you.”

            Grelle hissed like a vampire or a rabid possum. “Traitors! All of you!”

            Apparently, not staring at Will would do her some good. Ronnie ushered her to the break room, where they lit up a blunt and crashed onto the couch.

            “The will is infinite and the executioned confin’d, the desire is boundless and the act a slave to limit,” Grelle cried dramatically. She clutched a throw pillow to her chest and bemoaned her single state. A joint never did calm her down as much as it made her quote Shakespeare.

            “Alright, let’s relax. This is Mr. Spears we’re talking about here,” Ronald said through a mouthful of chips. Grelle tossed the throw pillow at him. That was what they were for, after all. Throwing at people. “I’m just saying! That is the same crazy fascist who once physically removed gum from your mouth.”

            Grelle slumped facedown on the break room couch. “That’s part of it, you fool!” she moaned into the coffee-stained cushions. “Oh, Will, what could I have ever done to make you forsake my love? Am I not a creature capable of learning? If you would only teach me! Can’t you have me, love me, make me? Oh, my William……”

            “I think this is a code chartreuse, she’s really down bad,” Othello mused. “Should we take her to the fancy boutiques and give her a hundred pounds? That always cheers her up.”

            Ronald opened a new bag of chips. “Alright, devil’s advocate- maybe they should fuck, just a little. It’s not like they haven’t done it before, and the world has continued to spin around.”

            “Attaboy,” Grelle said, muffled by the couch.

            Othello yawned. “I feel like you’re trying to make me the stereotypical asexual, who’s like… the only one who’s not rooting for them to get together. And during Pride Month?” He shook his head. “Wow.”

            “It’s July, mang!” Ronnie protested, throwing a chip at that basement-dwelling scientist. “Yeah,” Grelle said, rather sadly, from her face-down position on the couch.

            “Look, am I the only one that remembers how sad you were last time?” Othello pointed out, gesturing with a piece of licorice candy in his hand. “How cold he was to you? A man like that is no good for a lady like you. You shouldn’t fuck him. But hey, what do I know? I’ve only worked here for 300 years.”

            Ron sighed. “I have to agree, miss. This can’t end well. You have to not fuck him.”

            “My life is so hard,” Grelle whimpered, clutching an embroidered pillow like it was her emotional support animal. “Maybe I could get a tattoo. Or get my cherries pierced. That would help, I think that would fix me. Some cute little barbells…”

            “What’s the number one rule of the Grelle Sutcliffe Emotional Support Task force?” Othello asked. To which, Ronald sighed, “Don’t let her get her nips pierced.”

            Grelle turned over onto her side, back facing her two traitorous friends. Will was in his office, right now, extremely un-fucked. And what was she doing about his miserable, blue-balled state? She was lying on their stained break-room couch, discreetly hiding her very soft semi, and whining. As long as there were men to be devoured, there was fuel in her metaphorical spirit tank yet! Grelle pushed herself up on her elbows… then crashed back onto her pillow pile.

            “Help,” Grelle whined, like a cat that got itself stuck in a two-foot tree.

            “No, I think you should stay there,” Othello said, shaking his head. He ate some candy from a metal tin. “You should think about what you’ve done. And most importantly, you should not fuck our boss. He’s literally the human equivalent of getting your dick crushed by a stapler, then your balls? Your balls get stapled.”

            Grelle groaned, sliding onto the floor. She sat next to the coffee table and let her head rest on its edge. She crossed her legs in a ladylike way that hid her soft bulge at the thought of her callous boss. Keep in mind, this was the same man who had the personality of an old, cold cup of black coffee. “That makes me want him more.”

            “Ew,” Othello groaned, while Ron nodded. “I can dig it.”

            “So, it’s settled!” Grelle stood up, her knees immediately gave out, she then fell back to sit on the couch. “Doubt that the stars are fire, doubt that the sun doth move his aides, doubt truth to be a liar, but never doubt I- oh shit, is it Friday?” Ron checked his watch and nodded loopily. Grelle squealed and put her hands up happily like a cheerleader.

            209, who was passing through on his way to the accounting annex holding a stack of papers, paused. “Why is Friday important?”

            Grelle cooed, batting her lashes at the (handsome) new addition to their office. “Because, my hot little drop of Ira Aldridge, we do things in a very specific way here at London’s Grim Reaper Dispatch Society. On Tuesdays and Saturdays, there’s a group date. On Wednesdays, we wear pink. And on Fridays, the cafeteria serves these egg cream buns that are just…”

            “Better than sex,” Ronald finished.

            “Not the sex I’m having,” Grelle snorted. Not that there had been nearly enough of it in her life lately. “But, well… actually, they are a close second, depending on the guy.” (This made her blond mentee go, “I thought you were bi-sexual.”)

            “The point is, these steamed buns fuck severely,” Othello emphasized, leaning on 209’s arm for balance. Even standing up, he was a full foot shorter than him. The green-haired basement gremlin used his pen to gesture ornately (they call Othello a triple-A battery cause he’s so a-spec). “And my crew of problematic bachelors are going to get there first. Let’s roll, crew!”

            Grelle and Ronald linked arms for balance, looking like the very picture of sobriety. Except for the fact that they could not make eye contact without bursting out laughing. And the vague smell of pot that lingered on their uniforms. Any reaper who saw them, at least without their glasses on, would not have been fooled.

            “Really looking forward to these egg buns,” Ronald nodded. There was a glimmer of excitement and hope in his eyes that being a grim reaper hadn’t yet diminished. Grelle cooed and patted his hand. “Me too, darling. I’d almost forgotten about how badly I need Will to fuck me until my bones are water and my flesh is jelly!”

            “Damn. We almost forgot too,” Othello cackled.

Chapter Text

Will stared with morose longing at the steamed buns in the cafeteria display case. Rows upon rows of peaked fluffy dough, lightly browned and drizzled with condensed milk that pooled and oozed in every crevice. When one bun was removed from the tray, the rest jiggled a hypnotic little dance. “I should call her,” he said.

Alan, his self-appointed emotional guardian, rolled his eyes and dragged Will away to sit at a cafeteria table. Facing away from the steamed buns. “Sir, we’ve been over this,” he sighed, running a hand through his feathery brown hair. “You cannot screw Sutcliffe. I mean, HR would eviscerate you. You could get demoted. Sir”- Alan leaned closer and lowered his voice. “Sir, Ronald could be your boss. You could live at the whim of Ronald Lucille Knox.”

“No,” Will said in utter horror. “God, never.” He shivered, collecting himself in the face of perpetually being sent on Knox’s inane errands. The idea of himself, holding bags of differently flavored spicy chips in one hand and pink cranberry lemonade vodka in the other, for his subordinate that sincerely thought the Earth was breast-shaped, was just too much to bear.

William T. Spears was a man with a level of self-control on par with a dog, surrounded by squirrels, if the dog was utilizing every atom of strength it had to stay calm and not chase any. Due to this method of emotional regulation, he was as equally prone to snapping at his subordinates as an antisocial dog is to biting other dogs. (Coincidentally, he also used a shampoo made for show collies, and disliked cats.) He was avowed to abide by his philosophies of stoicism in the face of Grelle Sutcliffe.

“So, if you don’t mind me asking,” Alan said as he stirred a Splenda packet into his iced coffee (like a fucking fruit), “What’s your romantic history with Grelle?”

Will almost choked on his black coffee (the coffee of a normal heterosexual man). “Humphries, the humanity!” There was no one in the cafeteria with them. However, it was a sour thing to imply even in the company of something as good as oxygen molecules.

Alan sighed. “Well, there’s no one else here. Besides, acceptance is the first step.”

“They kicked me out of AA, and you know that.”

Alan crossed his arms and stared at him. “Do you want help or not, Will?”

The man himself sighed. “Fine. Fine, yes. I do. My name is William and I’m a Grelle-o-holic.”

“Hi, William.”

Will sighed in a gloomily wistful lament usually reserved for midnight showings of Hamlet. “I suppose it began in the Academy. Grelle Sutcliffe has been enamored with me since the day he transferred from the Berlin branch. And he… she has been living up to that garish name ever since. Ugh.” He winced at attempts to recall precise dates. “We first took up together perhaps half a century ago. I want it noted in your mind, Humphries, that my motive was necessity and convenience. None of this ‘Romeo and Juliet’ nonsense Sutcliffe blathers about”-

“Okay. With all due respect, sir?” Alan interrupted, holding up his hand to pause Will’s tirade. “I appreciate the attempt, but this isn’t going to work if you keep lying to yourself and me. We’ve been friends- or at least work proximity associates- for a while, you can be honest. I mean, I know you were a human being with feelings, and we still have them. So, let’s… talk about those feelings.”

He might as well have put on a hockey mask and started slashing, because that little speech terrified Will to his core. As a manager, responsible for the living souls of all of London, not to mention his hazardous employees, he felt he had to be seen as infallible. When he meditated, the imagery he pictured was a well-maintained, intricate clock, functioning perfectly. He was not a ‘feelings’ man.

Alan decided a ‘prompt’ approach might be more effective. “Alright. When I say, ‘Grelle is’, you say…” Will’s answer was a word now considered a slur, and Alan sighed. “Let’s try again. If something bad happened to Grelle, you would feel A. If something good happened, you’d feel B. If she kissed you on the lips, you’d feel C. If she detransitioned, married a woman, had kids, and never talked to you again, you’d feel D. What are they?”

“In order: Bothered. Annoyed. Ready to fuck a hole in a log. Disappointed.”

In response, Alan squeaked. Then, wordlessly, took out a little packet and stirred it into his own iced coffee. Will confiscated one for… reasons. After half a minute of silence, Alan cleared his throat. “Okay, so I think we can conclude that you’re physically attracted to her. Do you enjoy spending time with her outside of, uh, the bedroom? I do see you two together a lot.”

“There are…” Will hesitated. If he was being really, truly honest- Sutcliffe was not always annoying. There were instances. Fleeting moments in time throughout the everyday when he found her to be a warm, vivid presence. The quiet low murmurs under her voice when she overlooked someone’s paperwork, marking it up with her glittery red pen. The rare occasion she exhibited her legitimate experience and expertise as a dispatch officer. The black coffee she left him almost every day that he had never asked for once, which was endearing despite its redundancy.

“It is possible, on occasion, to have a decent conversation with Sutcliffe- unlike many of my other subordinates,” Will said, in place of all that nonsense. “For example, we had a debate about Othello- the play, not the forensics officer- the other day. Sutcliffe brought up the themes of Desdemona’s fidelity and how it was influenced by the closet plays of Hrotsvitha, which she studied as a student. Meanwhile, Ronald Knox thought Iago was ‘the parrot from Aladdin.’”

Like saying the man’s name summoned him, the double doors of the cafeteria creaked open, letting in a shaft of light and a distinct smell. (Alan identified pot. Will identified Sutcliffe’s perfume- the one that she uses on Fridays.) A laugh came with it.

“I have never, in my life, murdered a ballerina! I have no idea who started that rumor!”

His blood ran cold. And then he realized: the cold feeling was just because every ounce of blood in his body was pooling in one spot- in his lap beneath his impeccably folded paper cafeteria napkin. As Will’s brain devolved into that of an animal, Alan began to stand. When Will neglected to do the same, the younger reaper leaned closer to his supervisor. His voice was lowered when he hinted, “Sir, don’t you think we should go? We have that… thing. You know, the- the work- dispatch work thing. Spears?”

Will shook his head, hiding as much of his face as possible as he drained his coffee mug. He attempted not to ‘project his frustration onto his subordinates’, or however that shrink put it. Despite his need to avoid Grelle, he… couldn’t stand. He really couldn’t stand up. The idea of walking past Sutcliffe only exacerbated his frenzying anxiety. Will inhaled deeply and sighed, motioning for Alan to sit back down.

“Honestly, Humphries- we haven’t even eaten yet. I’m not a flesh-eating undead, it’s not as if I can’t be in the same room as…” the drastically unpoetic supervisor paused, trying to invent a covert code-name for Sutcliffe. “The ‘mangosteens.’”

“Wow.” Alan nodded. He took a deep breath. “Well, I can’t believe I didn’t know you liked mangosteens this much before, sir. To know, this whole time, you’ve been a fruit man.” (If looks could kill, they would’ve confiscated Will’s death scythe long ago because that glare of his was practically enough to make Alan’s soul temporarily float out of his body.)

Will tapped against his empty mug, attempting not to focus on the bouncy, vivacious Grelle in the cafeteria line. “It isn’t fruit, you pervert. Just mangosteens.”

***

“So, you’d think that salmonella is named after the fish,” Othello started. Ronald nodded, as if receiving strange lore. “But it’s not. It’s named after the doctor who discovered it.”

“No way,” Ron laughed as he selected a plate of chicken wings to add to his tray. He was the kind of guy who could run a whole fried chicken smuggling operation and get away with it for a solid three months before they started keeping better security on the wings.

“Dr. Salmon,” Othello confirmed. He picked up a can of energy drink to supplement his pile of egg cream buns. “He discovered salmonella. I hope his bloodline ended. Like, actually. Hey, you know you can get salmonella from chicken, right?”

To accompany his heaping tray of fried chicken and egg buns, the blond reaper chose chocolate milk. “Yeah, sure- but we’re dead. Time to live a little, mang!”

“He’s right,” Grelle declared from her place in line ahead of them, munching on an egg bun. “Why do you think I transitioned?” Her own tray, while stocked with fresh buns, a fruit cup, and sparkling water, could not fully fill her. Because it could never hold the things she wanted most in her mouth (Largely because they were all attached to Will’s body).

It was already crowded, and the line bumbled along. They’d planned to get there early- but everyone else seemingly had too. The cafeteria of the afterlife was big, minimalist, and surprisingly quality. Grelle hadn’t the faintest how all the food got there, but it was simply divine. They had spaghetti on alternate Tuesdays; it was so good that the thought of it actually made her a little horny. But she realized, as she spotted Will across the mess hall, it probably wasn’t just the spaghetti’s fault.

Grelle stopped dead in her tracks, holding her black plastic tray like it was a plate of human skulls. She severely wanted- needed- to thoroughly fuck her boss down to the core like a saw scraping away at a rack of gyro meat. He was just sitting there, across the room, deliberately avoiding eye contact with her. Grelle practically moaned- his silhouette in profile was just delicious! The slight hook in his nose, the disheveled hair, the rumpled tie, the removed gloves. The man exuded sex.

Meanwhile, Ronnie bumped into her from behind, almost spilling his tower of fried chicken. “Miss!” he complained loudly. The profoundly unsexual setting and her subordinate’s clumsiness did nothing to stifle the fire inside her body. She’d do him right here on that dirty linoleum floor. Eventually, Ronald and Othello had to herd her out of the line. It was so crowded, there was nowhere to sit for three amongst the many gray plastic tables.

Faced with situational overwhelm, Grelle shook her head. “Snap out of it, Grelle,” she instructed herself, and recited some mental affirmations. You’re a strong, beautiful, confident woman. You can do this. The doctors were wrong about you.

Grabbing a fistful of his stained labcoat, Grelle pulled Othello within scheming distance. She pointed to a table at the near end of the cafeteria where Will and Alan were seated opposite each other. Next to them was a small flock of ladies from Accounts. Grelle’s laser eyes were fixed on two women: the dark-haired office siren who had the nerve to sit next to her William and the blond floozy across from him who kept trying to talk to him or something. Grelle chainsaw hand itched just looking at them.

“O-the-llo, I think those girls are in our spots,” she trilled. “Will you be a dear and flush them out?” The forensics officer, who only came out in the daytime for the egg cream buns, rolled his eyes and leaned closer. Grelle brushed a mess of emerald curls away and whispered to him her super special blackmail material.

"Yo, ladies!” Othello waved with cheerfulness that was about as opaque as stained glass. One of them offered him a halfhearted wave back. He leaned in, ignoring the plethora of weird looks they gave him. From where Grelle was standing, he looked like a dumpy male fairy trying to sell pot to a clutch of succubae.

The forensics examiner laughed with over-the-top casualness, acting with as much suave as a middle-aged man pretending to be a cool teen. Grelle inhaled sharply. She’d have to school him some other time in acting basics. How could a man who named himself after a Shakespeare play be such a phenomenally bad actor?

In any case, he delivered the one line that actually mattered with aplomb. “Y’all hear they found black mold in the fourth-floor bathrooms?”

Juliet’s eyes widened like emergency exits in a fire. There was no mold to speak of there, but what there was? Several keys of coke hidden in the walls. The office sirens infesting Accounts had been having a 365 party girl summer since 1880. It wasn’t the sort of strategy Grelle liked to use, she wasn’t a blackmailer by trade, but desperate times, desperate measures and all that.

“Sorry,” the accounts girl blurted out suddenly, “I just remembered, we should really check on that mold- shouldn’t we?” Four of them left in a hurry. One even forgot their purse, which Othello would inevitably go through and take any candy from.

Grelle’s heels clicked on the linoleum as she made her way over, smiling with a bit of a leer. “Hello, my darling William! Hi, Alan. You don’t mind if we take these seats, do you?”

Will barely regarded her, but the mere glance he spared was enough to stoke her flames. Somebody ought to call emergency services for all the flash flooding, fires, and earthquakes happening in her body. He let out a grave sigh. “I suppose not. Clean up after yourselves. Knox, get yourself extra napkins as a preventative measure.”

“Lovely! Alan, darling, can you scooch over? Just to the side, one seat over- thank you~!” Grinning like a cat, Grelle took the seat opposite Will and set down her tray, victorious. She endeavored to act ethereally beautiful yet still grounded in reality.

Grelle bit into a warm bun, savoring the taste, and thought things so degenerate about the egg cream filling that she made herself shiver.